MIT geeks + Thanksgiving = spectacular origami designs

By Liz Stinson, Wired

Updated 1242 GMT (2042 HKT) February 25, 2014

MIT Geeks create an origami Thanksgiving8 photos

Exapanding the boundaries of paper – Basic origami is as simple as folding a piece of paper according to instructions. However, a group of MIT students decided to take that concept up a notch and tackle the geometrical complexities behind elaborate shapes.

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MIT Geeks create an origami Thanksgiving8 photos

Nerdy Thanksgiving – Every Sunday, 20 to 30 of them get together on campus to create extraordinary shapes. They call themselves the OrigaMIT and recently they crafted a Thanksgiving-themed collection of paper sculptures.

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MIT Geeks create an origami Thanksgiving8 photos

Where math meets art – Every origami model relies on a blueprint - a series of pre-determined creases that guide the folder through the process. Yongquan LuI, a mathematics major and incoming president of OrigaMIT says: "I really love how systematic it is. It's the perfect combination of math and art."

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MIT Geeks create an origami Thanksgiving8 photos

Four hour fold – This particular model of a turkey was one of the more challenging shapes and took around four hours to fold.

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MIT Geeks create an origami Thanksgiving8 photos

Developing new templates – This selection of paper birds was made with both pre-existing and original origami designs.

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MIT Geeks create an origami Thanksgiving8 photos

Origami analysis – "We'll ask ourselves, 'Ok, where does this step come from, why does a designer choose to do it like this?" says Yongquan Lu.

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MIT Geeks create an origami Thanksgiving8 photos

No just for geniuses – He adds that, though OrigaMIT probably tends to be slightly more math-centric than your typical origami club, you don't need to possess "A Beautiful Mind" caliber math skills to join.

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MIT Geeks create an origami Thanksgiving8 photos

Big brain requirement – However, looking at these complicated shapes, it would probably help.

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Story highlights

A group of MIT students started an origami club to push the boundaries of paper folding

The club explores the geometrical nature of origami to create complicated shapes

They recently created an elaborate Thanksgiving inspired tableau

In theory, Origami is simple: Take a sheet of paper, follow the dotted lines and without the use of scissors or glue, you've got a paper crane. It stands to reason that if you're good at following instructions, you're good at origami.

And that's true—anyone can fold their way to a simple paper crane. But truly grasping the geometric complexities of that crane? That's actually pretty brainy stuff.

Nerdy Thanksgiving

Origami is arguably more math than art, so it makes sense then that MIT would have a thriving origami scene. Every Sunday, a group of around 20 to 30 people gather on campus to experiment with paper folding techniques. Most recently, the group folded a series of turkeys, cornucopias, pine cones and vegetables to create a gorgeously nerdy Thanksgiving tableau.

If you're not a math person, it might seem incomprehensible to fashion a turkey out of a single piece of paper, but for Yongquan Lu and his fellow OrigaMIT members, it's an entertaining challenge. Lu, a sophomore mathematics major at MIT, is the incoming president of of OrigaMIT, and has been practicing paper folding since high school.

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Every origami model you see relies on a blueprint—a series of pre-determined creases that will guide the folder through the process. In the beginning, precise, careful folding can get you pretty far, but if you want to start riffing on designs or creating your own, you have to have more than an elementary grasp on some basic mathematical principles.

"I got more involved in investigating the connections between math and geometry behind it," he says. "These days a lot of the stuff I fold is a lot more geometric, more tessellations." For the Thanksgiving scene, Lu contributed the cornucopia basket, which he nonchalantly describes as a "pretty well-known conical, flat tessellation pattern."

Most of the students at MIT approach paper folding with a highly-technical slant. It's not uncommon for the group to have a lengthy discussion about reverse-engineering each of the diagram's folds or talk about polyhedral shapes and hexagonal symmetry. "We'll ask ourselves, 'Ok, where does this step come from, why does a designer choose to do it like this? Or I wonder if I started with these proportions, what would happen?" Lu explains. "That really comes out of the engineering background of a lot of our members."

No need for whizz skills

Lu is quick to clarify that though OrigaMIT probably tends to be slightly more math-centric than your typical origami club, you don't need to possess A Beautiful Mind-caliber math skills to join in.

Sure, the peacock-like turkey took more than three hours to fold, but if you look around, there are tons of simple yet beautiful contributions like the vegetables, leaves and pine cones. "We wanted to show that there are models of varying complexities. Sometimes people get intimidated because they think we're folding all of these complex models," he says. "But actually everyone can get involved—it's not something that's exclusive and insular in any way."